The Effect of Cryotherapy Application on Postoperative Pain: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

To systematically review and meta-analyze whether the application of cryotherapy on closed incisions reduces postoperative pain and opioid consumption.

Reduction of acute pain and opioid use is important in the postoperative phase of patient care. ''Cryotherapy'' refers to the use of low temperatures for therapeutic purposes.

MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and Online registries of clinical trial were search until October 2019. RCT that examined postoperative application of cryotherapy over surgical incisions in adults compared to no cryotherapy were eligible. Selection, extraction, and risk of bias appraisal were completed in duplicate. Data were synthesized using random effects meta-analyses. The outcomes of interest were postoperative pain, opioid use, hospital length of stay (LOS) and surgical site infection (SSI).

Fifty-one RCTs (N = 3425 patients) were included. With moderate certainty evidence, patients treated with cryotherapy experienced a reduction in pain on postoperative day 1 (standardized mean differences -0.50, 95% CI -0.71 to -0.29, l 2= 74%) and day 2 (standardized mean differences -0.63, 95% CI -0.91 to -0.35, I 2 = 83%) relative to without cryotherapy application. With moderate certainty of evidence, cryotherapy reduces opioid consumption in morphine milliequivalents and morphine milliequivalents/kg, (mean differences -7.43, 95% CI -12.42, -2.44, I 2 = 96%) and (mean differences -0.89, 95% CI -1.45, -0.33, I 2 = 99%), respectively. With low certainty evidence, cryotherapy does not affect hospital LOS or rate of SSI.

Cryotherapy is a pragmatic, noncostly intervention that reduces postoperative pain and opioid consumption with no effect on SSI rate or hospital LOS.